Steven Murdock Obituary, Death – It is with a heavy heart that I must inform you of the passing of Steven Harold Murdock, who served as the Director of the United States Census Bureau in the past. On June 18, 2007, President George W. Bush nominated Dr. Murdock for the position of director, and in December of the same year, the Senate overwhelmingly confirmed him for the position. On January 4, 2008, he was officially appointed as the director of the Census Bureau, and he resigned from that position on January 9, 2009.
When Dr. Murdock accepted the position, he was aware that it would only last for one year before a new President took office and made his own appointee. He is an excellent example of someone who prioritizes public service over personal benefit or personal interests. Between Director Kincannon’s resignation and the knowledge that his replacement would hardly have one year in the job of director before the start of the 2010 Census, he is credited with being the steady hand that kept the census on track. This accomplishment has earned him the title of “steady hand.”
Dr. Murdock was the first official state demographer of Texas. For more than 25 years, he served as the director of the Texas State Data Center and the Texas Population Estimates and Projections Program. During this time, he played a pivotal role in the state’s participation in the decennial censuses that were held in 1980, 1990, and 2000. He studied and wrote about the distribution of populations in Texas, and he wrote dozens of books and approximately 50 articles for academic journals about the changing population features of the United States and Texas, such as race, education, and income. He also studied and wrote about the distribution of populations in Texas.
In 2007, he began his position as the Allyn and Gladys Cline Chair in sociology at Rice University in Houston. His areas of expertise include applied demography, migration, rural sociology, and socioeconomic impact assessment. There, he spent the better part of a decade leading the institution’s Hobby Center for the Study of.